


Two Sides of a Different Coin

by Elizabeth



Series: Clockwork Camelot [2]
Category: Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Banter, But That Isn't Really Important, Dialogue Heavy, I haven't decided, M/M, Possibly Pre-Slash, Religious Debates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: This is a spin-off of Clockwork Camelot. In this story, Gwaine and Galahad will have long conversations about all manner of things. Reading the last several chapters of that work is probably necessary for this to make sense. Probably.Gwaine is gregarious and Galahad is a level-headed former (possibly) priest. They disagree about most things.So far, that's it. That's the story.I'll update this summary if they decide they need to do more than argue.





	Two Sides of a Different Coin

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own these characters and I'm not profiting from their use..  
> Sorry for any typos! Thanks for reading. <3

The night was hot, and Gwaine had rolled his shirtsleeves and unbuttoned most of his shirt. The family home was spacious, but Gwaine found it constricting, as he had since his parents’ deaths. He escaped to the terrace to watch the stars. Galahad joined him.

“You seldom visit,” Galahad noted. It was part observation and part assumption.

“No reason to, any more.”

“Yet the grounds are maintained, the house aired.”

“A necessary expense.”

“Is it?”

“The estate—if you call it that—has been in the family for generations. Sure, it’s no Camelot, but it’s ours. I can’t be the one to lose it. Especially after my father… didn’t.”

Galahad didn’t ask Gwaine to elaborate, just fixed his grey eyes on him and waited.

“My father was…” Gwaine was hesitant. He looked at Galahad, considered him, and continued. “He lost everything. Nearly everything. They stripped the house bare to keep the creditors at bay.”

“You honour them with its renaissance.”

Gwaine leaned his head back and watched a shooting star fall. He smiled. “I dreamt of this as a boy. I thought I’d find my fortune as a pirate, though, not a knight.”

“I do not think that life would suit you.”

“Oh?”

“So long at sea; no place to stretch your legs.”

Gwaine chuckled. “I guess you’re right. What about you?”

“I love the sea.”

“No, not that. Though yes, me too, but I think you’d never be a pirate. I meant your dream.”

“Oh, well…” Galahad trailed off. He made a low hum in his throat.

“Embarrassed? Let me guess. You dreamt of a career in millinery.” He ignored the snort. “You have bound pages of colourful sketches and plans for fascinators of all sizes, tricorns, bergère hats with dainty ribbons.”

“I find such headwear… perplexing.”

“Not conical enough to pass muster?”

“The zucchetto is not conical, nor is the galero.”

“Here,” Gwaine said. “Drink this.”

“Why?”

“You need to lighten up.” Moments passed in comfortable silence.

“David.” Galahad took a sip of ale. Gwaine sat for a moment, confused, blinking. “I was… enamoured with the stories of David.”

“Oh yes, I remember one about him watching that woman bathing.”

Galahad smiled and shook his head. “‘The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.’” The low timbre of his voice was languid in the honeyed stillness of the night.

“Are there lions in Israel?”

Galahad sighed and looked away. The sound prickled the hairs on Gwaine’s neck. Discomfort and regret. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Tell me more.”

“I had no armour, like David, was younger than the other boys. I understood what it must mean, to stand against Goliath.” Gwaine hummed in agreement and Galahad’s voice was dreamy and sonorous as he quoted, “‘Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee.”

Gwaine watched the moonlight reflect on Galahad’s profile: the straight line of his nose, the almost-delicate curve of his chin, the dip between his lips. Galahad turned and caught his gaze. Gwaine searched his mind for the right response and was unsettled by its contents. “And then he bullocksed things up with Bathsheba.” It was crude and inadequate. Galahad’s grey eyes flashed with hurt at his lightness. Gwaine shook his hair from his face and kept Galahad’s gaze. “‘Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,/Black shade, fair muse, shadow my white hair:/Shine, sun: burn, fire; breathe air, and ease me;/Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me…’”

“Imaginative.”

“Peele used a bit more colour than the Good Book. What does it say?”

“‘And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.’”

“It does lack a certain romanticism.”

“It isn’t aspirational, Gwaine.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. Those actions anger God.”

“Yet David is given wives and concubines, and—”

“Loses much as punishment.”

“Much?”

“Their infant child, and later Absalom, who had been favoured.”

Gwaine scoffed. “He triumphed over Absalom in battle, after he rebelled. He had how many sons?

Galahad paused, his eyes evasive. “I don’t recall.”

“How many wives and concubines?”

“Eight wives. More concubines.”

“And can we just for a moment consider the suffering so many live through on a daily basis?”

“David was chosen—anointed by God—and he was faithful.”

“Adultery _and_ murder, Galahad. And did we even ask what Bathsheba thought about all this? Did she _want_ to sleep with him? Or could she not say no? And then she had to marry the man who killed her husband.”

Galahad sighed heavily and rubbed at his temples. “Remind me why I came here.”

“To enjoy my company.”

“I am not enjoying your company.”

“I’m sorry. But I’m right. For an all-powerful god, there really is a conspicuous lack of… fairness.”

“Fairness. I’m not denying the suffering so many experience. But we are not able to know what He knows. His wisdom is infinite.”

“Isn’t it much more likely that whatever force there may be out there is just ambivalent?” He leaned forward in his chair and rested his forearms near his knees.

“Perhaps. That is why we call it faith, Gwaine.”

“That strikes me as a retreat. A capitulation without the angst required to admit you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. I speak of what is in my heart.”

“Look. I’ve seen some crazy things in Camelot. And all this stuff with Arthur and Merlin definitely lends itself to the idea there’s something… more. Merlin thinks so, anyway. He’s always going on about the gods leading him to… speak to rocks or whatever. But—okay, no.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, leaning back. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I asked about. I’m sorry. I understand your identification with David. It is a brilliant story, slaying the giant with a sling.”

“It made me want to learn to… take care of myself. Defend myself.”

“Against whom?”

Galahad was silent for a moment. “I was not well-liked as a boy.”

Gwaine imagined him as a little boy, terrorized by his elders, pushed around, and something seemed to lurch in his chest. “I hope you gave them hell.”

Galahad’s only response was a slow smile. His grey eyes seemed to reach into Gwaine’s gut, grab hold there, and twist.

“Tell me about your boyhood,” Galahad said. He smiled and his face was wistful.

“It was warm and bright and full of ignorance.”

“Your father’s losses?”

“Yes.” Childhood was perfect until it wasn’t anymore. “And then I grew up.”

“But you lived here.”

“Until I was just old enough to ride to Camelot on my own, and there I stayed. I used to go there with my father for months at a time, so I knew its possibilities. Everyone knew of their tournaments, the masters of arms who would train anyone willing to sign his life away.”

“For queen and country?”

“And Uther Pendragon. He was legendary. And I was friends from Arthur from those early trips. His father was so different from mine… If I couldn’t be Blackbeard or Calico Jack, I would be the most brilliant military mind in the empire. I would fight airship battles, instead.”

“Less criminal activity.”

“Well, that depends, doesn’t it? You aren’t a criminal if you win.”

“Oh Gwaine. Nothing is black and white, is it?”

“No, it isn’t.” He looked at Galahad, searched his face. “Are things so black and white for you?”

“I grew up in a mission.” He shrugged.

“Orphan?”

Galahad nodded. “There was only black and white.”

“I have heard terrible things…”

“No. Had it been so terrible, I would hardly have taken the cloth.”

“Only absolute and uncompromising. No ambiguity.”

“We were taught there is right and there is wrong, and we were taught to serve God.” Gwaine watched Galahad closely and saw his eyes track downward.

“My father blamed us for his failures. He took risks because of us, he said. For my mother and me. And when it came crashing down, we were there to blame.”

“We were…” Galahad’s eyes roamed the night. A white moth fluttered by, its wings lustrous in the gaslight haze. He made a noncommittal motion with his hand, unlike any other Gwaine had seen him make.

Gwaine was not certain if he should be silent or speak. If he was quiet, Galahad may say more about his childhood, or he may feel awkward and retreat into reticence. If Gwaine spoke, he may seem egoistic, but he may make Galahad more comfortable sharing. Quid pro quo. Gwaine was not accustomed to this uneasiness. He shifted in his chair, trailing his finger along the rim of his glass.

“I saw a fortune teller once, in Camelot. When I first arrived on my own.” Galahad raised his eyebrows and turned his head in interest, so Gwaine continued. “I knew a little about magic, growing up here in the hills where they say all manner of men and creatures roam. And, of course, I had seen a little on those earlier trips.”

“Naturally.”

“I knew there were seers, but I hadn’t met any before travelling there. This fortune teller, well…” Gwaine huffed a small laugh at the memory. “He was—”

“He?”

“Yes, he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Striking, like Merlin—the eyes, the lips, cheekbones. Puckish, you know?”

“I didn’t know you…”

Gwaine paused. “What?”

“I didn’t know you… enjoyed male company.”

“I enjoy company.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway. This fortune teller had set up shop in the back of a tavern. I was so young!” He chuckled at the memory. “Paid way too much. He told me everything I wanted to hear. I was going to travel the world, I would be a great warrior, and I would stand beside kings and queens as an equal.” He pushed his hair back from his face. “Anyway, that night Arthur and I spent hours walking the castle parapets, dreaming up everything we were going to do. He was fearless, so I was too.”

Galahad made a low noise. “I would envision him as the cautious one of the pair.”

“No, that is why he has always needed looked after.”

“I understand.” And Gwaine could see that he did.

“That fortune teller, though, let me think I had a chance.”

“Do you think he was a true seer?”

“No, after I saw true seers work, I realized I’d been had.”

“And yet, he spake truth.”

Gwaine considered this and laughed. “Forsooth.”

“Do you regret your life of knighthood? It is, in a way, a kind of servitude.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No. I was not lost in the priesthood, but I had not found my way.”

“Yet you haven’t renounced it; you haven’t abandoned your vows, right? The clothing betrays you.”

“It is my armour. My cassock is my uniform, like any other robe.”

“So you still consider yourself a priest?

“I have given it much thought and prayer. I have learned that a conclusion may not be forthcoming.”

“You mean it isn’t black and white?”

Galahad’s smile was subtle, but Gwaine’s eyes devoured it. “Everything is becoming grey.”

“Like your eyes.” The words passed Gwaine’s lips before he could think or stop them, and he bit down on that treacherous lip, wishing they hadn’t. If pressed, he would not be able to articulate why he wished he had remained silent; as it was, he just felt his face heat—a sensation he had not experienced in years.

The grey eyes met Gwaine’s. “Not like yours,” Galahad said. He stood. “We should rest. It will be morning soon.”

Gwaine took a drink and nodded. His eyes were brown and full of uncertainty. “Good night, Galahad.”

“Good night, Gwaine.” He paused for a moment before he walked away. "It's interesting you say you can't _lose_ this house. Not let it go." He rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb, clasped his hands behind his back, and turned to go.

They went to bed, two bedrooms apart. Gwaine felt there was much left unsaid.


End file.
